Posts Tagged ‘Hosting’

Domains, Hosting, and Platforms, Oh My!

For those super savvy computer people out there, understanding the way a website works can be a breeze. For the average American, though, it is often somewhat of a mystery, and anything mysterious seems ominous at first.

Need to Know Basis

You probably have more important things to do than figure out how a website uses a domain, is hosted by a company (sometimes even the one that has your domain), and which platform it is built on in order to do what you need done. You are not alone. (If you DO want to know, we have more about domains, hosting, and platforms here). This is why we say, leave it to the experts – US!

At Integris Marketing, we set up multiple websites on a daily basis, we know the ins-and-outs of the process and where potential issues can arise. We navigate these for you, so you don’t have to worry or troubleshoot your website – ever.

White Glove (Worry Free) Hosting Service

Our White Glove Hosting is just that – top of the line hosting for an affordable price that takes care of everything you didn’t need to know about getting your website up and running. We also use 100% Solar Hosting, so you will be doing a good deed for the environment at the same time!

White Glove Services Include:

Priority support for business websites

Local (U.S.) Server Manager and Tech Support

Live Support by a real person!

cPanel for ease of use and back-end access

12hour back up of all data

Mirrored servers

Multi-level security (Spam blocking and Hacker protection)

Up to date Primary code (Security & SEO purposes)

For more information on how our White Glove Hosting can take the stress and confusion out of your website set up, call us today at 775-322-3663.

Proprietary Websites

Proprietary websites are everywhere; they offer cheap website designs and often, cheap hosting as well. However, there are free or open source options that provide much better benefits. There are a multitude of issues that come with this type of website platform – our top 5 are below:

Limited Design & Branding Options

No Ownership or Flexibility

No SEO Options

No Search Engine Respect

No Support

1. Limited Design & Branding Options

You are limited to the color palates, lay out templates, and widgets that they have available.

There are thousands of websites out there – and probably hundreds of businesses that do something similar to yours. So how do you stand out? Being online is important – including social media (but we’ve gone over that before); however, it doesn’t help to distinguish yourself when your website looks like everyone else’s. Your business is unique in some way, shape or form – show that to your clients!

2. No Ownership or Flexibility

You do not own your proprietary website – the creator does. If you want to move your site or use a different designer, you have to start from scratch. This is frustrating and costly as the services you have already paid for basically disappear and are wasted. You cannot take it with you when you leave – and if something happens to the business that created your proprietary website – you lose everything.

3. No SEO Options

Most websites are being created so people (clients or customers) can find them and buy the service or product you sell. The way a website is found by most people is through searching. We enter keywords or terms we think apply to our topic and a list of relevant websites is returned to us. These keywords or terms are coded into the back end of every webpage. Without them, your website can only be found by someone who has the exact address – so they already know you and your website.

These proprietary websites often have no way for you to set up your SEO (search engine optimization), which means no one will find your website unless you tell them how to get there. No searches will return your company and your website is pretty much useless for bringing in new clients.

4. No Search Engine Respect

If, by some miracle, your proprietary website has a special upgrade or ‘pro plan’ that will give you SEO options (for a price), you need to know one last thing: Search Engines can tell who built your website, and they don’t love proprietary site builders. If your search engine doesn’t respect your website, you are not likely to end up at the top of your target client’s search results; which means unhappiness for your business rather than increased sales and a bright new outlook on the future growth of your company and cash flow.

5. No Support

Let’s face it – things go wrong- and when they do, a great portion of our satisfaction with a service is the ability of the offender to make it right again. Most of these proprietary websites have clunky forms, round-a-bout ways to contact them, or no human response whatsoever. When your company reputation or your personal one depends on how you respond, you need to know that you have fast, reliable support available. This is usually not the case with a proprietary website – if you can find a way to contact them, they are not usually very efficient and an emergency on your part does not an emergency on their part make.

Our Recommendations

We have been designing and developing websites for many years – and we have learned that open source platforms are the most user-friendly, wholly owned, SEO ready, massively supported and unique option for websites today.

Platforms like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal make creating a customized, branded experience for your customers a simple, straight forward, and effective process for your business.

Call us today at 775-322-3663 to learn more about how Integris Marketing can help your website work for you!